danth

Hey guys. I've held my peace until now, but I'd like to share my thoughts on all this. If this somehow gets me a nice, transformable, smaller-scale VF-1 toy, I'll be ecstatic. I hope Bandai or some other company (Not Yamato, please) makes a line of transformable valks -- the new valks, of course, and older valks. Maybe even valks like the VF-4 and VF-5000. A quality line of toys (like Spec of SOC) from a quality company. I'm not really happy with Yamato because the toys are so big and the plastic is so thin. Second, what's up with Kawamori eliminating the other Macross designers from all of his projects? Is his career strategy to make sure that he himself is the "god" of Macross, instead of just the mecha designer? Macross 7 was so cool to me because Mikimoto and Miyataki were part of it. Without them, it won't seem like Macross to me (and yeah, I didn't like Macross Plus either). I don't find the new character designs to be particularly good. I like the new valk! I hope to see more new valks, fast packs, and reaction armor. I'd hope for destroids, but without Miyatake, I don't care. Still, I hope we get some cool enemies in the style of Zentradi, and by that I mean the enemies should have their own aesthetic. The zentradi looked weird but cool. And they fought in cool looking MECHA! I gues that's what I really want. The supervision army would be perfect, so they're out of the question. As for what little bits of art and animation we've seen, I will say that the characters looks pretty angsty. I hope they turn out to be as likeable as Mylene, Gamlin, Hikaru, or Misa. EDIT: One more thing. I hope the CG valks look like the fuchi/tachikomas from GitS:SAC. In other words, they would only be detectable as CG because of their perfect movement.

Has to be lone wolves. You can die in between. I still need the Steppin' Razor, Nice Try Buddy, and the Spartan Laser Double Kill.

Hey guys, I just discovered this show. And I freakin' love it! I've always found gansta culture to be a rich mine of comedy gold, and the last five or so episodes I've seen of this show really cracked me up. I've seen a little of season one and two, and I think season two is even better than season one. The animation is stellar! The Stinkmeaner Strikes Back episode is my favorite so far.

Well, let me say I think these toys look awesome. I'll definitely get a few.

Dude, my memory has totally failed me. You're absolutely right. Well, for once I'm glad to be wrong.

Rey's energy gun is supposed to mount on the forearm armor plate, not replace it. I hope this is just a case of mistransformation, if you can call it that.

I'd be down for some Halo 3. Gamertag: Coocoocola. Man, has anyone else been playing way too much Halo 3 since it came out? I decided yesterday to severely cut back to a max of twice a week. It's been taking up so much of my time. Also, I've max out my ranks -- now, the majority of my games are lagfests and I can barely get any wins. I've noticed that, as I get higher in rank, the more headshots it takes to get a kill. All that means is lag is getting worse, so I've theorized that most of the people at my rank are somewhere in the East coast with awesome internet connections. So not only am I never getting host, but I also have bad lag. I wish there was an option to only play with people in the same state (California). The "prefer good connection" option has not improved my experience at all.

Wow! Thanks for posting this. It's nice to some beautiful 80's style anime character art making it to a real museum, although I wonder if these would have been considered artsy/edgy enough without the giant milk-streaming tits and such.

How about Scarlett Johansen?

That is so awesome. I'm downloading now. I can't believe you're a full fledged fansubber now, man. Right on. Maybe that's why you haven't had much time for your blog (which I miss reading).

Hey 88, are these subbed or raw?

Did you guys hear that you can create your own levels in Smash Brothers Brawl?

Wow, I'm glad you guys got my hopes so low for the CM Ride Armor with your comments. Now that I'm finally able to see the picture, it's not half bad. It's a Banpresto Cyclone! I think it's cute, although it won't be so cute if I find out it's more than like 2500 yen. Even that's way too high, but I expect ridiculous prices when it comes to Japanese toys. Fantasy: these are released for 1500 yen each, with Stick, Rey, Yellow, and Fuke types. They release fat boy & his jeep and lots of little inbits for cheap. I want cheap Mospeada toys! I want armies!

Dude, way to go 88! How did you get the translation done? I am so downloading this when I get on my own computer later.

So I watched all of it, and I really liked it. It reminded me of a mix between Project A-ko and Prefectural Defense Force, but with more spaceships and stuffed animals. I don't know Japanese, but based on the animation alone, I'd buy this in a heartbeat if it came out on DVD. 88, I also found California Crisis. Holy jeebus does it look amazing. The art style is something like 80's surfer t-shirt prints. Well, the look is hard to describe, but I really like it.

Ah! I made a hotmail acocunt and tried it again, and I got the confirmation email instantly! Thanks for the tip. Now I can finally watch!

Dude, I tried registering for that site twice now, 88, and it won't send me a confirmation email. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

Well, my main concern, if it's an interlacing/pulldown problem, is: can I fix it? Can I watch all my crappy DVDs and still get a good picture? I believe the answer is "no". If there's some miracle DVD player out there that can make my Black Magic M-66 DVD play without aliasing or line shimmering, please give me the model number. And I'm not being sarcastic -- I'll buy it. Also, most of my DVDs have great pictures, so I would think my DVD/TV combo is doing everything it can. EDIT: I feel like I need to carefully explain my situation. I have a progressive scan DVD player and a HDTV. If I turn off all sharpness and edge enhancement, most of my DVDs play great. Most of them look much better than when viewed on an SD TV, with less aliasing. However, a about 15-20% of my DVDs (mostly Manga releases) have aliasing, or look edge-enhanced, no matter what I do or what equipment I use. I just think laserdisc shouldn't be dismissed as inherently inferior. I know, I'm the one who said that I suspected laserdisc was the better way to go. But I just realized that 80% of my DVDs look great, and it's mainly my Manga DVDs that look bad. So I'm not so disillusioned with DVD anymore. Uh oh, that sounds messy. So the solution is to have a TV capable of 1080p? Boy do I hate edge enhancement. It's the worst! Yep, I had to learn this the hard way. I always turn all edge enhancement and sharpness off. It still doesn't help with the "bad" discs I'm talking about, though. All good stuff, VT 1010. Thanks!

Sure, but how do we know that those problems are inherent to basic idea of laserdisc? Hardware dependency just means that some people made junky laserdisc players -- I don't think that's the fault of the technology itself. Laser rot was usually due to faulty manufacture (using low quality adhesive). Sure, and in the same way, newer Laserdisc media might have continued to provide improvements in picture and sound, if we had gone that way. It's funny you mention Manga Video. If it weren't for them, I'd probably be totally happy with the DVD format. I just realized that all but one of my DVDs with video problems are Manga releases. Friggin' Manga.

Thanks for the info, I'll check it out, but, I've noticed the same problems using multiple player/TV combos, and I always confirm the video problems with sites like AnimeOnDVD to make sure it's not just me. I'm pretty sure it's the DVDs themselves. That's good to hear, but I suspect pulldown isn't the problem. Uh oh, maybe my question wasn't clear. What I meant to ask was: will new High-definition DVDs (HD-DVD, Blu-ray, whatever) have the same digital aliasing/compression artifacts I mentioned. I know upconverting doesn't help (at least, whenever I try it, it looks horrible).

Dude. That's kinda like a punch to the gut for me. I always sensed that digital technology had somehow failed us. Ever since I started watching DVD, I started noticing all kinds of annoying aliasing that I didn't remember from VHS. I never did have any exposure to Laserdisc (except for watching Tenchi Muyo once at a small convention), but I remember when they were considered the hot new thing, and they were very expensive. I always wanted to have some one day, with their giant surface area available for really great artwork. Hearing that Laserdisc is analogue kinda solidifies my suspicion that we've chosen an inferior media, and it's sad. Laserdisc has a sort of mystique, for me. Can one buy laserdisc players anymore?

I have a question for you guys who know about this stuff. Will HD actually fix the common problems we see on Anime DVDs? The main problems I see are: 1) Jaggies, or jagged lines. This is when you can actually see little squares in the lines on the screen instead of smooth lines. This seems to be more pronounced in scenes with lots of movement. 2) Line shimmering. This is when lines in a still shot sort of "come alive" and look like their vibrating or blinking. 3) Jumpy panning shots. This is the "camera" slides over a still image, and you either see double images, or you notice big-time interlacing. 4) Rainbows. This is when you see bands of color where there should be none in between black lines. I would think those are all compression problems. I've noticed that panning problems are significantly lessened on my HD TV, though.

I liked Macross 7 a lot too, and I'm indifferent to Basara. I wanted to like him, but I never developed any feelings for him like I did for Mylene and Gamlin. Let Basara have the Flower girl. Mylene and Gamlin should get together. I also liked the underused bad-ass, Veffidas! No, not shallow at all. I had the same problem. I just try to ignore it.

Wait, wasn't it reprinted not too long ago? I got it new a few years back. Is mine a bootleg?

Okay, so what do you guys think about the supervision army as the new enemy in Macross F?